TED Talk Parody Shows How Easy It Is To Brainwash Us With Formulas

Subliminal messages in advertising are but one tool available to public relations and propaganda professionals to manufacture consent, create unanimity, and encourage group-think. The use of formulas, scripts and rehearsals are also integral parts of the production process, and a look at how easily a formula can influence our perception of the information being presented shows us just how easy it is to be duped by well-presented nonsense.

TED Talks are ubiquitous on the Internet, and their comfortably predictable formula lends them instant credibility. The well-produced, important sounding speeches featuring seemingly ordinary people with “Big” ideas have become a source of wisdom and knowledge, as important to our culture as 24-hour news pundits and Snopes.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) produced a TED Talk parody video which hilariously exposes the formula that gives TED so much of its instant credibility, while showing how ‘thought leaders’ are created by the magic of media production.

Throughout modern media, mainstream news and television, well-groomed presenters, who are really actors, are trained to use language, pause, inflection, volume, suspense, drama, and emotion to instruct you how to receive a message. This is rehearsed and perfected so that you only see the final confident and authoritative performance.

Group-think doesn’t just happen. Conformity of thought and deed are cultural implants, brought into being by clever marketers, psychological change makers, and script writers. The TED formula works, and pretty much anyone can copy it; and in the era of fake news and intense propaganda, it’s no longer acceptable to take media at face value.
Given the nature of the human mind, most people are unaware enough to separate the information being presented from the way in which it is intended to be received. Furthermore, much of what is presented to us as live broadcasting is actually well planned, well thought out, well rehearsed and well designed to not only plant ideas in our society, but to shape how we feel about those ideas.

Here, Luke Rudkowski of We Are Change offers insight into how this actually works in media organizations like The Huffington Post, telling of his invitation to a ‘live’ broadcast which turned out to be taped, rehearsed and well manicured before being presented to the public as if it were truly live.